It takes a very talented
writer with a light touch to write a comic novel based on an actual tragedy.
J.G. Farrell was such a writer and his Booker Award-winning book, The Siege of Krishnapur gives a witty account of a mutiny staged against a British
garrison by sepoys (native soldiers). In
mid-nineteenth century India, the fictional Krishnapur, an outpost of the
British East India Company, is cut off for months from supplies of food,
medicine and other commodities by a native revolt. Eventually disease and
starvation cause great suffering and many deaths. Within the walls of the garrison, Farrell
creates a microcosm of all that is admirable and despicable in Victorian
society. The British react to this attack in the best way they know—stoically
maintaining their British way of life. Hence, they keep class stratification
strictly in place throughout the siege, particularly in the division of food,
clothing and shelter, and even in the process of burying their dead. And there
are many dead, so many bodies awaiting burial that the vultures become too fat
to fly. The story revolves around several main characters, well-known Victorian
types—stern paternal figures, beautiful self-absorbed daughters and wives and
even a fallen woman. There are men of business who cannot agree on the
management of the crisis; men of the cloth who cannot agree on the spiritual
decisions that must be made; and men of science, who cannot agree on the treatment
of cholera and other diseases and
injuries. They are all forced to
struggle for survival in the small, poorly stocked garrison and their
hide-bound sense of superiority does not serve them well.
